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Creative GPLs X-Fi Sound Card Driver Code

Posted by timothy on from the intelligent-move dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a move that's a win for the free software community, Creative Labs has decided to release their binary Linux driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium sound cards under the GPL license. This is coming after several failed attempts at delivering a working binary driver and years after these sound cards first hit the market."

6 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Sound cards are irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not even gamers buy sound cards anymore. I bet Creative's sound card business is small fries compared to their consumer electronics business.

    1. Re:Sound cards are irrelevant by vux984 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not even gamers buy sound cards anymore.

      It does make you wonder what the 30% "other" is though.

      They've got Creative Labs represented at about 3.5% between Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy, and X-Fi. But is that accurately counting all the X-Fi variants? What about the multitude of Audigy 2's that aren't "ZS". Ditto for the diverse original Audigy line. The venerable SoundBlaster "Live" series that preceded the Audigy isn't represented at all. I wouldn't really be raising the question, except that we've got that giant 30% "other" sitting there. I could easily see another 5 or 6 or more percent being various creative labs cards.

      In any case, I agree with you that that even gamers aren't buying sound cards the way they used to.

      That said, some of those steam numbers look WAY out of whack.

      Take a look at 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio monitors, which they claim make up 26% of all monitors. And within widescreen 34% claim 24" or larger (24" @ 15%+ over 24" @ 19%).

      That equates to 9% of all users using a 24"+ screen. Yet if you compare that to the primary display resolution table, a mere 2.29% are running 1920x1200 or larger. 1920x1200 is the native resolution on 24"-26" screens, with 30" being 2560x1600 (and not represented at all in the chart).

      I call bullshit.

  2. Re:Soundcards? by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    Musicians (like me) will buy better-quality hardware than Creative. :3

    --
    ~ C.
  3. Re:At last! by Tawnos · · Score: 4, Informative

    Vista does, yes.

  4. Re:Soundcards? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    One popular card is the good old M-Audio Audiophile 2496, which costs around $100.

    Don't get the newer Audiophile 192 unless you need 192 kHz or balanced outputs. It is dumbed down, with reduced duplex, and you can't route the SPDIF input from, say, a TV at the same time as you route analog sound from, say, the GUI. You get one or the other, but not both independently.

    There are many other popular choices, but the M-Audio is one of the more rock solid ones for Linux use.

  5. Re:Soundcards? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Headphones.

    No one else gives a damn about headphones. The quality issues with on-board sound become quite apparent with a good set of headphones, and even most other consumer sound cards treat it as an afterthought, doing whatever they would do with a set of stereo speakers. The X-Fi (at least under Windows) has an absolutely excellent headphone spatialization algorithm for general listening, it completely resolves the fatigue issue that results from hearing only a single audio channel in each ear without naturally occurring crossfeed. As for gaming, Creative (or rather Aureal's) head related transfer function tech for 3D audio is second to none; it's better than 5.1 speakers and is the only thing on the market right now worth a damn for 3D audio on headphones.

    Unfortunately I'm not sure how much of this would be usable under Linux. The spatialization issue in particular drives me nuts.